Speaking to the Guardian, the 82-year-old singer-songwriter says he hopes to play full gigs again following retirement from touring

• ‘I never said I was going to retire ...’: Paul Simon interview

Paul Simon has hinted at a return to live performance, despite quitting touring in 2018 and losing the hearing in his left ear during the recording of 2023 album Seven Psalms.

Speaking to the Guardian in a new interview, the 82-year-old singer-songwriter said: “I’m hoping to eventually be able to do a full-length concert. I’m optimistic. Six months ago I was pessimistic.”

(City Slang/Merge)
Evidently running out of ideas, the Canadian musician has used AI to alter his voice into rappers and singers – a dismally insular style of working that produces little of note

Ever since Beethoven dismissed the newly invented metronome – “Whoever has the right feeling, needs none” – musicians have reacted against the advent of technology. The Musicians’ Union voiced alarm when Wurlitzer organs became appended with a drum machine in 1959, calling it a “stilted and unimaginative performer” – but today, drummers are still in a job while music from rap to techno has blossomed thanks to that very technology.

There’s still plenty of concern about the newest wheeze, however: AI. Big software companies such as Adobe are creating tools where a mere text prompt can produce a piece of music. Or what if you can’t sing and don’t want to pay someone who can? Don’t worry! Numerous AI services online will take your lyrics and sing them for you in convincing simulacra of various human voices. Professional vocalists might wince at the new album from Caribou, Canada-born Dan Snaith, populated as it is with multiple ersatz AI singers – all of them altered versions of Snaith’s own voice.

(Parlophone)
Their 10th album has epic songs that make you feel like you’ve climbed Everest – but they’re undermined by corny lyrics and ​ambient-orchestral waffle

Amid worsening weather and worsening war, pop music can seem pointless at times – and more necessary than ever at others. Coldplay induce both of these feelings, sometimes within the space of a single song, with their spectacularly sentimental 10th studio album Moon Music.

Over some Chilled Piano to Study To motifs, Chris Martin opens the album wanting to be more optimistic, to “find the flight in every feather … I’m trying to trust in the heavens above / And I’m trying to trust in a world full of love”. The album then wills that world into existence, filled as it is with affirmations of humanity’s potential, celebrations of non-denominational spirituality, and an almost scrupulous avoidance of politics – an end-of-history utopia where cultural difference is championed but also homogenised into total harmony.